Miz Jade is on her second day now of a whirlwind blog tour. That was not a phrase that actually held much meaning for me when she first used it, but she was kind enough to explain it to me, and it’s sort of been like that since I got started over on Misanthropology101 — Cassandra left the first comment on my first post, in fact (well ahead of my deadbeat friends), so it’s an especial pleasure to be visiting her blog in turn.

Cassandra invited me to say “something about writing communities and internet presence,” and I promised to give it a shot. She’s vastly more qualified to speak on the subject than I am, but I’ll try to lay some things out without lapsing into too much navel-gazing (people who really want to gaze at my navel can always visit Monday’s post at Misanthropology101, but I swear I didn’t time it that way deliberately).

Anyway, it all comes back to skills learned in kindergarten, or at least the sort of skills that other people say they learned in kindergarten (I learned that even if a kid was bigger than you a brick was still functionally bigger than him, but I was picking up exactly the opposite of the skills you want for getting along in online writing communities). Share and share alike, disseminate every interesting piece of information you know to anyone who will listen, don’t show anyone your swimsuit bits — that’s the kind of thing I’m talking about. Unselfconscious spontaneous interaction is what the writing blog/forum scene is all about!

To be sure, there has to be a certain amount of practical content, particularly for blogs. If you want to connect with other writers, it does help to have “writing” in the blog tags somewhere — I assume that’s how Cassandra found Misanthropology101, back when it was first getting started. She’s very good about keeping an out for newcomers on the scene (another great kindergarten skill). But I’ve learned that people are less interested in day after day of nuts-and-bolts technical lessons than they are in “Storytime with Geoffrey” (also true of kindergartners, to keep the metaphor rolling). I like many of my posts about writing technique, and think them to be generally good advice, but they are not the heavy hitters in terms of comments or pageviews.

That is because blogging — and writing, ideally — is about fun and about interaction. If people don’t get both of those things, fun and interaction, they aren’t going to come back for a second or third visit. And there’s certainly a self-serving element to all of this; we want people to have fun because we want them to keep playing with us, i.e., keep reading our blog or referring it to our friends or what have you.

And that’s just fine. There is nothing wrong with wanting your blog to be more known, more visited, more popular, whatever. The trick is to remember that you want all those things because it gives you more people to have fun with, not because the numbers are inherently valuable. So by all means tailor your writing for maximum entertainment and engagement, pander shamelessly, post topless pictures of yourself — whatever you think will be enjoyable to share. But remember that it’s all kind of silly unless the ultimate goal is to meet even more people that you enjoy sharing things with!

One thing that everyone seems to enjoy is lists, so I’ll finish one (and maybe should have started with it, for the short-of-attention-span):

GEOFFREY’S GUIDE TO BLOGGING LIKE A KINDERGARTNER

1. Say hello to everyone, especially if they say hello to you first. Introduce new friends to your other friends!

2. Share all your thoughts! Unless they are deliberately rude or mean.

3. The more fun everyone in the group has, the more everyone will want to play again.

4. No, seriously, the brick is bigger than you.

If you liked this post, tell Cassandra! Also tell your friends, and drop by Misanthropology101 every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for many more absurd thoughts on the writing life. Cassandra’s guest post is of course featured today, and she is welcome back any time she likes — keep up the good work Miz Jade, and keep up the good reading all the rest of you!

Turns out planning a blog tour is exciting, exhilarating, and a lot of hard work. The tour kicks off on Wednesday the 1st of September over on Eric’s blog, working my muse, and Eric is going to be visiting the realm so I am definitely looking forward to it.

I’ve been busy, writing guest posts, double checking links, making sure everything is going to plan and knowing that something is probably going to come up anyway. I’ve also been helping out with the 40 hour famine. As always, so much to do and so little time. Writing has definitely been taking a back seat but I’m getting back on top of everything so hopefully I’ll have a few really good writing sessions in the near future.

First week of the blog tour begins with Eric and then on the 2nd I am visiting Geoffrey, followed by Lua on the 4th. Hope to see you all there and please pass the word on.

Okay I’m undecided as to whether I should be setting goals or not. On the one hand I feel I need something to aim for at the moment, on the other, I know how incredibly busy I’m going to be at work and I can already see any time-line I decide on for writing being utterly destroyed very quickly.

So here is me keeping my goals fairly loose.

1. I am going to read at least 3 novels a month until the end of the year. I will not actually make the 100+ goal I set but at least I will have a read a fair number of books. Having only read 30 this year I think I can say goodbye to the 100+ goal and I’ll just focus on the 3 a month.

2. I am going to finish the first draft of this WIP I’ve been working on, although the decision to start over writing in first person is going to make this one a bit of a time-crunch. I could probably finish the draft as it is in a few weeks but I would hate it and so I am starting over and will aim to finish the draft by the end of the year. That gives me plenty of time to procrastinate and get caught up in other things and still have a chance to accomplish this goal.

3. I am going to submit my completed manuscript to various agents until I find one for it. As I have to wait to be rejected from one before I try another (sometimes that is their rule but it is mostly mine) this may take a little while but I’m not going to shelve the project again.

4. I am going to try to set up a blog tour for September. I’ve been wanting to do one and just haven’t found the time and now I’ve decided it is definitely something I want to do, the only question is how to go about organising it. To that end I am asking anyone who could stand hosting me sometime in September on their blog to let me know either in the comments or by email – cassandra (dot) jade (dot) author (at) gmail (dot) com – and I can start to think about a schedule for that.

That’s probably more than enough goals to keep me busy until the end of this year. Now I just have to work on not feeling guilty for falling behind or away from any of these.